The present invention relates generally to the field of soft tissue retraction for minimally invasive surgery and more specifically to methods and illumination systems with integrated retractors for minimally invasive soft tissue retraction.
In various surgical procedures, illumination of the surgical field is typically achieved through the use of overhead lighting, headlamps and surgical microscopes. There are scenarios in which these illumination sources provide lighting that is either poor in quality or poorly directed. Light from an overhead source is fixed and often blocked by the surgeon or others in the operating room. Surgical microscopes are little better and headlamps may be adjusted as a physician tilts or moves his head to redirect the output beam, but still may be blocked by various anatomical structures or layers of tissue and muscle. Lighting from either source may not be adequate as the physician progresses through various phases of the procedure requiring visualization of the anatomy at varied depths from the skin-level incision. Additionally some illuminated surgical systems are not efficient at transmitting light and therefore require a powerful light source which can generate excessive amounts of heat that may be uncomfortable for a surgeon or others in the operating room.
Conventional retractors are often not suitable for minimally invasive procedures. The incisions are often too small and the resulting surgical site too deep for conventional retractors. Also, some conventional retractors are not always ergonomically designed to be comfortable for an operator to retract various tissue from different positions.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide improved surgical retractors which can illuminate the surgical field more effectively. It would also be desirable to provide improved surgical retractors that are more comfortable for a surgeon and that can accommodate various anatomies and surgical fields better than existing instruments. At least some of these objectives will be met by the embodiments disclosed herein.